Well, I guess every single blogger in the world has already done an iPhone story, but I might as well.
The fact is, it’s beautiful. It’s easily the best looking device Apple have made since the titanium Powerbook G4. The design has that sort of “Why on earth has no-one else thought of that?” feeling that only Apple seem to manage to do well nowadays. It makes the most use of the available space efficiently and prettily, it manages to fit full functionality into that small space, the touch interface appears to be very well thought out and it has a really good screen resolution. The fact that it can go from a normal phone call into a Blackberry-esque email system simply by clicking the right button is fantastic; it’s the big advantage of a touchscreen and they appear to have come up with a version that works.
Plus, it’s got WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0, so you don’t have to pay provider’s nasty internet rates nearly as often as you do with other such phones. This all needs to be factored in when considering its nasty US price ($500 for 4GB/$600 for 8GB, or going through the currency channel £250/£300 over here – although it’ll likely be less because of the British mobile contract system.)
Some of the caveats bloggers are tossing about aren’t really, for instance with regard to the battery life. The “5 hour” life Apple quotes is talk time, which is very different from standby time; the iPhone has so many proximity sensing features it’s almost certain to have a very good standby time, although it isn’t quoted on the technical specs page (although a 16-hour music only time is, which is about as good as my Creative Zen Touch). If left alone, as a mobile most often is, it’ll probably last a whole lot longer.
If we go to Nokia’s website and look up one of its comparable smartphones, for instance the N80, note the listed talk and standby times: the N80 has a talk time of “up to three hours”, two hours less than the iPhone even when GSM-only, while it manages a lot more on standby. The only people who will have their iPhone turn off after five hours are people doing lots of Web hopping and making constant phone calls, and these people will be just as unhappy with an N80. Or how about the Motorola Q (once you get past the obnoxious Flash anim, 4 hours quoted talk time)? Or maybe the Blackberry Pearl (3.5 hours)? The iPhone isn’t at all out of place in this market, really. The only comparable smartphone I could find with a better quoted talk time was the Sony Ericsson W950i, which manages 7h30 on GSM only (but drops to 2h30 on UMTS, which may explain the lack of 3G in the iPhone).
Certainly the iPhone isn’t perfect – the software lockdown is unnerving, although there’s enough unique software on there that finding equivalents for the stuff that isn’t really shouldn’t be a problem, and both the lack of UMTS and “US-only until Christmas” are really annoying – but you really don’t need to bash it for something which is true of every other phone on the market. Cisco willing, the mobile phone market is going to get very interesting from now on as Motorola et al desperately attempt to copy the iPhone’s looks and feature set, and good luck to them. They’re all going to need it.
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 